So you wanna start your own magazine? Well you’ve come to the right place! Hurt2Healing Magazine has been blessed to celebrate 9 years of publication, and with a great deal of experience under our belt, I wanted to share some of the behind the scenes of how it all started!
I’ve been approached by many who are interested in launching their very own magazine. After speaking to a few aspiring publishers I decided to create this series to offer any assistance based on my experience in starting a digital magazine from the ground up AND with zero dollars! Yep, that’s right! I’ll touch on that shortly. When it comes to producing physical copies of your magazine, you may want to do your research on where to get the product printed so that it’s done to a standard befitting the level of effort you put into it. You could try Printivity’s services, more of which can be found out about here – https://www.printivity.com/products/booklets.
An important tip that must not be overlooked when starting a magazine: Make sure to become a student of magazine publications, both print and digital, before taking on the task of starting one. I would even go as far as suggesting to begin with newsletters just to get used to the workload of releasing a publication on a regular basis. It is how I kicked off H2H Magazine and it helped me tremendously in preparation for the big launch. It takes A LOT of work, research, late nights, editing, organization, networking, attention to detail, creativity, consistency, passion, love, patience, follow ups, enthusiasm, faith, confidence, motivation, dedication, PRAYER and help from others (writers, resources) to have the endurance for creating, launching and maintaining your publication.
As you can see I didn’t list money as a must have, because one can actually launch a magazine for zero dollars! Don’t believe me? I did! I didn’t start off with anything to spend. I was in graduate school full time, working full time, attending massage school part time and taking care of living expenses…plus my pastry business! But I had a plan, faith, determination and creativity on my side and it worked out, thank Allah (God)! So I’m going to share with you how I got started. The below are concepts that I had to begin with before actually getting to the publishing aspect of H2H Magazine. To be honest these are the most import keys to a successful magazine.